


Good Christian Men, Rejoice!

by josephina_x



Series: Choice and Consequence [1]
Category: Smallville
Genre: (as usual), (what else is new?), Canon Compliant, Gen, Lionel is a jerk, Not Beta Read, post-Jitters (1x08), pre-Rogue (1x09)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-03-17
Packaged: 2017-12-05 13:26:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/723787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No matter how you slice it, Lionel is a bastard ...even to his own family. Lex is trying to come to terms with this, and is finding it hard to swallow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Christian Men, Rejoice!

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Good Christian Men, Rejoice!  
> Author: [josephina_x](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com)  
> Fandom: Smallville  
> Pairing: --- (gen)  
> Rating: G  
> Spoilers: general for all of season 1, picks up after Jitters (1x08) but before Rogue (1x09)  
> Word count: 4300+  
> Summary: No matter how you slice it, Lionel is a bastard ...even to his own family. Lex is trying to come to terms with this, and is finding it hard to swallow.  
> Warnings: Un-beta'd.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.  
> Comments: Yes, please! :)  
> Author's Note: *shrugs* Have a new fic?

~*~*~*~*~*~

"What the h--?!" _Gah!!_

Lex slid down the snowbank and came to a rough and skidding halt at the bottom. He felt his hands and legs go that strange shocky-numb, despite the layers between them and the chill, and then begin to pulse and burn from the hard landing and the wet but still freezing-cold slush that was slowly melting under him.

He sat there for a moment, a little breathless and dazed as he looked around. He was a bit in shock, trying to wrap his mind around the fact that what had just occurred had actually happened: he had been hit by a snowball; he had slipped and fallen; he had been unable to regain his balance and hit the ground hard; he had slid down an embankment a good five feet; his work clothes -- suit, jacket, and shoes -- were an utterly unrecoverable mess.

The twenty-one year old turned his head, craning his neck up at his father, who was idly tossing a snowball up and down in one hand.

"Lex," his father said reproachfully. "Son, how many times have I told you? You must always be prepared for an attack at any time, from even the most unlikely of sources. You shouldn't let yourself be surprised like that."

...Somehow, Lex didn't think his father could be considered an unlikely source of attack.

He had to admit, he _was_ pretty surprised, though, when Lionel tossed the second snowball to Dominic and let _him_ pitch it dead-on into Lex's face, instead of taking the shot himself.

Lex wiped the stinging snow and ice crystals off of his face with the crook of his elbow and inner-sleeve, and as he slowly clambered to his feet, he winced away as the helicopter threw up more snow into his face from the hastily-cleared elevated helicopter pad as the blades started to spin at high-speed.

He lowered his arm and only looked up once it was airborne and almost a speck in the sky.

Lex shivered and attempted to wipe off his clothing, but it only made his hands sting worse, even under the gloves. He stared down at his hands, curled his fingers in towards his palms once, twice, and wondered absently if he'd managed to scrape them even through the thin, seemingly-uncompromised material. They certainly stung enough for it.

...No, he was fooling himself, he realized, thinking back to his Excelsior days. Nothing that hurt that much ever showed on the surface.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Ugh," Lex muttered quietly to himself as he eased himself into his car. This was going to ruin the upholstery, sitting in there in his soggy mess of clothes and ground-in slush and grit. There was nothing for it, though.

Lex drove back to the mansion, being careful of the slippery roads for once in his life, and when he got in, informed the maidstaff of the state of the car and to call a service for him -- the driver's side seat was going to need cleaning, if not reupholstering entirely.

He carefully used the mat at the inside door of the garage to clean off his shoes, but did not remove them, in the hopes that any extra moisture might simply slide down his legs, instead of dripping directly onto the floor.

It was a vain hope.

Soon enough, he had himself firmly ensconced in his bathroom, in a tub full of hot water, having stripped down straightaway leaving every last article of clothing in a sodden and tangled heap on the warm tile floor.

Say what one may about the ostentatious old manor, but the fact that it had been transported brick-by-brick had allowed the place to be rebuilt with the best in amenities both modern an ancient, and heated floors like the baths of Rome were one of them. Lionel had spared no expense. Lex's new home in exile might be in the middle of corn country, but it was warm and draft-free, at the least.

 _In retrospect,_ Lex realized, sliding down into the tub, _I don't actually know who threw the first snowball at me._ Oh, he could guess, certainly -- his father would have taken it as an offense against the Luthor name if any of the lesser staff or employees had hit him, by accident or not, rather than joined in. Lionel also would have frowned upon anyone of a higher station who dared to try it in his presence without the permission of his authority: only Lionel and those he directly controlled and managed were given such limited free-reign with him.

So -- Lionel? Or Dominic?

He slumped down until he was nose-level with the rising level of the water, and grumbled little bubbles out of his mouth under the surface.

Then he wrinkled his nose and pushed himself up and forward. He turned both faucets off, and slid back to enjoy the soak -- as much as he could, anyway.

 _Probably dad,_ Lex decided. Dominic had no real imagination to speak of. Lionel was also all about the timing. Dominic would've been too impatient to wait until Lex had been about to step carefully on that patch of ice, before he'd been right at the top of the stairs down the rise, before tossing that snowball at his back would have startled him enough to cause a misstep and have him ending up halfway down that snow-covered concrete slope.

Dominic wasn't quite so creatively _nasty_ as his father, Lex was coming to find.

Lex slid down farther in the tub again, hunching his shoulders as he thought of the Christmas Eve closure of the plant. _No, Dominic never held a candle to my father. Dad's the original bonfire, probably set off the first flames of hell himself._ His father had decided to close down the No. 3 plant for a few days around Christmas, which had thrilled the workers. Lex had a feeling that they'd be less than thrilled when they realized that Lionel had meant _without pay_.

It was yet another scheme meant to undermine the progress of the plant: a partial closure with a skeleton crew and holiday pay would have been enough to keep the levels of output high enough that they'd be able to easily make the next month's shipments. Lionel's Dominic-approved "wonderful cost-saving measure" would mean that the plant would be sitting abandoned, for several days, completely shut down, for about a week. Getting everything back up and running after that would be far more costly than just letting the plant sit idle with even a skeleton crew on-call, and the amount of usual overtime pay and long hours that the plant workers would have to pull to make up for the lost time and still make quota would literally drive everyone into the ground.

Of course, Dominic's smarmy remark back to Lex's complaints was that 'if the work-output was at proper levels, there would be no need for overtime', to Lionel's accompanying smirk. Blowhard mouthpiece. The man woldn't know an honest day's work if it bit him in the...

Lex sighed and glared darkly into the middle distance in front of the bathroom walls. He could either do what his father told him to do, or not. If he did, he could let Lionel take the bad rap with his employees, but then he'd have to choose between having the plant suffer the risks of the reputation hit of late or unfilled orders with their customers and the board of directors, or working his people into the ground in January and then having to deal with the fallout from _that_ in February.

...Or, he could ignore his father just like he had a little over a month and a half ago when he'd been given that lamebrained order to cut a hundred workers from the payroll, and risk Lionel's wrath just like he had before. If he didn't shut down the plant, he could maybe get the factory closer to running in the black, _if_ he could get the employees went along with it. But, if he did that, the plant workers wouldn't see him as looking out for their needs and giving them a break, Christmas to New-Year's -- they'd see him as the bastard who made them all work over the holidays when the company CEO told them they could take the time off. If Lex worked them anyway, he knew he ran a real risk of alienating the workers, which would have them dropping production anyway out of pure spite, and then they _still_ might not end up producing enough for the month to fill all the orders to completion, which in turn would have the plant's reputation suffering a hit, possibly even worse than if they had closed down in the first place, because they would've been open during that period and _still_ been unable to make quota.

For a moment, Lex thought that Lionel might've been offering him a situation where actually following bad orders might cause Lex less trouble in the long run, if he just decided to keep his head down. The very thought made him itch under his skin -- do what I say, without caring about the actual consequences to others, and you'll do just fine? Worse, he actually found himself considering caving in, _just this once_... which Lex was at least wise enough to realize was always a dangerous personal precedent to set...

...at least, up until Lex realized the personal-cost pitfall to the week-long shutdown of the plant: he'd be the one who'd have to deal with the complaints of the 'missing pay'. Because Lionel wasn't there -- he was -- he could possibly end up being the scapegoat saddled with the wrath of that decision himself. It would come down to a 'he said, no he said' situation, where Lex would say that they didn't have the money to pay them for the off-time in the budget and that Lionel had told him _not_ to recompense them for the period, and Lionel... could say whatever the hell he wanted. He could say that had been his original intent, or that it hadn't. Hell, he could claim that he'd told Lex about the decision well-in-advance and that Lex hadn't budgeted properly for it. Lex might have to end up paying out anyway, having the plant go further into the red, just to calm the workers down, blamed for it himself, and Lionel would be smirking all the way.

Lex scrubbed his palms over his face in irritation. What had he done to deserve this?

...Of course, when Lex took a step back, he could say, possibly even objectively, that it wasn't entirely his fault at all. Earl Jenkins and his Level 3 claim had caused an entire sublevel of the plant to be filled in with concrete overnight, once Lex had become involved. If Lex took the logical conclusion one step further...

Well, either it hadn't been _completely_ filled in -- only enough at the known entrances that it had _seemed_ to have been--

... _or_ it actually had been. And if it had been, the material to do so had to have come from _somewhere_ on-site, because Gabe hadn't seen enough comings-and-goings to account for it all ...which meant that it had to have been stored very nearby that sublevel, somewhere inside the factory itself--

...which meant there had been more than one sublevel.

Either way, Lionel probably wanted the opportunity to clean up the rest of his probably-highly-illegal hush-hush mess in peace and quiet during the ever-so-convenient holiday season...

...and he sure as hell couldn't do that with that many of the normal staff still running around, now could he?

Damnit. If Lex didn't close down the plant, and somebody saw something they shouldn't, either they'd get paid off, or...

No, Lex didn't want to think about that. No-thank-you.

The aftermath of last week, with the hostage situation and the chemical leak and the revelation that his own father would lie to him, blatantly, _to his face_ , leaving him ignorant and effectively walking blind into such a volatile situation, let alone giving the order to _seal him in_ rather than negotiate or do anything useful at all to help him, had been a real eye-opener.

No, Lex could not trust his father anymore. And that _hurt_ , but he wasn't about to let that stop him.

So, he'd have to deal with this situation the only smart, fair way that he could think of.

...Lex had a phone call to make, and this wasn't going to be pretty.

Lex closed his eyes and slowly slid under the surface of the water.

~*~*~*~*~*~

_When in doubt, pass the buck._

The mid-level management at plant No. 3 were waiting in the conference room for Gabe and Lex, chatting quietly with each other about how they'd handle the plant shutdown and their own holiday plans. It was what they assumed was on the agenda.

In a sense, they were right. It just wasn't the _only_ thing on the agenda.

Lex walked to the front and opened his laptop. He set up the projector, and waited while everyone took their seats.

He began his presentation.

There was dead silence for awhile. Lex took it as a good sign that his own people hadn't interrupted him, up until he realized that they might just be in shock.

"Are you sure those numbers are right?" one of the floor managers asked.

"Gabe helped me double-check them this morning," Lex said, trying not to sound too defensive over it, and pointedly _not_ glancing over at Gabe.

The dayshift manager was frowning, tapping his fingers against the table as he stared off into space, eyes unfocused, thinking hard. "That might..." He sat up a little straighter, leaning forward. "Damn. That's... damn. --Let me see that," he said, focusing on Lex and gesturing at the laptop.

Lex unplugged it and handed it over.

Pretty soon, there were five people clustered around the laptop and open spreadsheets, re-running numbers, all of them frowning, with a few others nearby scribbling on paper and getting into arguments about the possibilities and alternatives for rescheduling shifts, payouts, holiday benefits...

Lex glanced over at Gabe. Gabe exchanged a look with him.

"I'll order lunch," Lex said, slipping out for a moment. He needed some air.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex was grateful that the various managers had taken what he'd warned them Lionel had said about time off without pay at face value, without questioning the veracity of the statement or his understanding of the situation, but he still waited until they'd all worked their way up to a common understanding of the money and personnel situation before he let the next big issue drop.

The big, 'unofficial' issue.

The first question he got was, "Why wasn't this part of the presentation?"

Gabe took that one dryly: "Fortunately, we don't have facts and figures for the Level 3 operations."

There were grimaces all around.

Lex then got an impromptu grilling for twenty minutes or so as they all ate their lunch, on what _exactly_ happened during the hostage situation. Lex gave them the bare-bones, unvarnished version.

A few people put their sandwiches down. Then a few more.

It got quiet.

...Well, except for Lex talking and a handful of the 'old grizzly' floor managers who were still munching away, who seemed to have no problem with their appetites at all.

"What?" one of them said at a few glares and a pointed comment. "Why do you lot think I've been working here so long? I'm apolitical to this shit. I do the job I was hired to do, and that's it. It's why I'm still here; I'm not _ambitious_ , so I haven't _moved on_ ," he drawled out, and Lex couldn't cover his own wince. He also got the feeling that Gabe hadn't missed the sudden round of exchanged looks between certain managers at the table.

"I'd rather keep this unofficial for a reason," Lex cut in. "This is mostly speculation. For all I know, Lionel might just want to send his own people to double-check the piping, to make sure the chemical leak really is squared away. Maybe he wants to update some things that might not be up to spec in the other parts of the factory complex and doesn't want any reporters sniffing around because of the possibility of bad publicity. Hell, maybe he won't send anyone to the plant at all." Lex sighed and rubbed his forehead. "The point is, if Lionel sends people to do _something_ and the factory is open, if it requires the shutdown and the fact that it's still online wasn't expected, there may be issues. If people are here and it's something he's trying to keep quiet... there may be... _other_ issues."

From the grimaces he saw, he knew he'd been understood. "Look, bottom-line: effectively, we're being subjected to a quiet furlough, and I want to make sure that nobody's caught in the lurch this month. It's _possible_ that Lionel might pay out the funds from the main LuthorCorp branch to cover the week for the employees, even though he ordered that the local factory funds aren't to be." _Not that we would have the funds to cover that ourselves for no work done_ didn't need to be said by this point -- that had been the whole presentation in a nutshell. "It's possible, _but not likely_ \-- not from the way he was talking about it." And he hoped that these people believed he knew his own father better than they did. Despite the fact that a handful of days ago, he'd been blindsided by his father's attempt to let him more or less kill himself in ignorance, almost murder-by-proxy, and now wondered if he actually knew the man at all. "I'd rather not count on the main branch's generosity when we don't have a signed authorization from general payroll held in our hands that we know will cover it, if you know what I mean." He met each manager's eyes squarely.

"I'd also like to make sure that everyone who desperately needs their paycheck can get some time to work, but isn't put in... unnecessary harm's way, given the reduced state of the plant," Lex continued, groping for words. "I'd like to keep the unofficial issues as quiet as possible, but not at the expense of people's decision-making. I don't want anybody surprised if something happens," he said. He'd been on the receiving end of that, hadn't liked it, and wasn't about to put anybody else through it too, out of spite or anything else. "I also want to make sure we can make quota, and that the budget and our workers don't suffer too horribly doing so."

Finally at the end ofwhat he'd wanted to say, Lex screwed up his courage, took a deep breath, then said, "Any ideas?"

And then he stopped talking, and listened.

...And there were, in fact, some ideas. _Many_ ideas, in fact. Good ones. Some of those that were bandied about were ones that he hadn't thought up before on his own, even.

 _Choice,_ Lex thought, as he watched them go at it and let Gabe mediate the discussion. _This is what happens when you have the freedom to choose._ It was a little scary, and left him a little breathless.

He wasn't going to forget this, not for a long time.

...Later, he was dragged out onto the factory floor, and production was stopped for a bit while he had to give an impromptu speech to the workers who were on-shift. He left out the Level 3 bits just then, but told them his basic concerns about everything else. There were questions. He answered them.

There was some talk and milling about for awhile, and then he was asked by one of them if they -- the floor workers -- could be given some time to discuss who might want or need to work over the holiday, and talk out a holiday work schedule among _all_ of them, if there was time in the schedule to spend a couple hours doing so, since the original idea (as far as they'd known to start) was that the factory would shut down sometime in the next two days anyway.

Lex's eyes flicked to Gabe, who nodded slightly. He memorized the man's face for good measure -- more intelligent men for the fast-track to management were always good to have.

It was at this point that Lex realized the managers hadn't even begun to flesh out the details of Lex's original plan with the shift managers, let alone had it filter down to the workers on the floor. No-one but a handful of people in passing had known he'd originally wanted to keep the plant open but working at a much lower capacity for abbreviated hours, and had been actually planning on enacting such that year. Prior to Lionel's announcement, they'd apparently assumed a regular work schedule that they would have to grudgingly perform. Next week's schedule hadn't been finalized at all, and Lionel's announcement had just thrown a spanner in the works. So, Lex had a quick discussion with the managers and their assistants, and they came to the conclusion that a few before- and after-hours meetings at the transition periods between shifts wouldn't disrupt the current schedule much.

Lex voiced such to the group on the floor, they all agreed on it, and the workers and the assistant-floor-managers got the line back up and running, while the managers shuffled back into the conference room to send out a few administrative emails and announcements about the scheduling briefing-meetings, and then sat down to actually come up with a schedule that could have names filled into it.

By the time the next shift was starting to straggle in for work-duty, they had settled on a final plan of attack:

They were nominally going to keep the factory running on a crew of volunteers the first three days. Little, if any, work would be done on the factory floor for safety and security reasons, and the list of workers would not be expanded past 10% of the usual for a normal workday. The engineers and mechanical staff in the building would be limited to those who could perform shut down together, and there would be one high-level staffer in the building who could make sweeping administrative decisions if necessary. That way, if Lionel or anyone contracted from the main branch showed, they could either: (a) shut down the plant if absolutely necessary, or (b) not shut down the plant and keep on only an out-of-the-way skeleton crew for plant maintenance to avoid the costly restart process later. In either case, they'd have to send home all the assembly line workers on the floor.

If no-one obviously not part of the usual operations showed within the first three days, then it was likely that no-one would show, because Lex figured that Lionel would want to get any work done during those days right around Christmas when no-one else would be paying attention, in the media or other outside oversight, their attention being elsewhere. If that happened, then the on-site skeleton crew composition would shift to those who could support plant operations, and the holiday work schedule sign-ups could be as high as 40% of the usual. As Lex wanted to give additional 'bonus' holiday pay, they had to draw the line there to prevent the budget from jumping past the usual cumulative norm for per-day operational salary.

The sign-up process went smoothly, and the extra-pay incentive got more people excited then Lex had anticipated. In the end, they had to have a lottery for places in some of the shifts, despite all the disclaimers and warnings they'd had to give about those first three days.

Lex and Gabe worked out a schedule to come visit the plant at some random times those first three days, just in case, figuring that if Lionel did try anything odd, that his people would be less likely to do anything untoward to the employees lower down the totem pole if they were there than if they weren't.

Lex took most of the mid-day times on Christmas Day. It wasn't like he had anything else to do.

~*~*~*~*~*~

As it turned out, Lionel was a no-show, as were his goons -- at least as far as anyone at the plant had been able to tell. Productivity was good over the break, spirits were high, and they met quota. The LuthorCorp main branch never ended up paying out any bonuses to make up for the unpaid forced leave, and the employees sneered good-naturedly over their unofficial furlough.

Lex, along with Gabe and the other managers, sighed a collective breath of relief as they made and passed quota on time, and just squeaked by at-budget -- for the first time in _years_. The changes in policy were working! When the workers heard that they'd been in the black that month, morale _soared_.

The next month, they did _even better_.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Six months later, when Lionel announced to the entire workforce that he was closing down the plant, while slyly making the implication that it was due to poor management, Lex took a quiet moment and let himself be glad that he'd already set a precedent for dealing with this sort of thing. He was glad that the initial groundwork was there to support him; they'd seen it all before.

Clutching the folders to his chest, he took a deep breath and released it.

He glanced over at Gabe, who nodded and gave him a reassuring smile, though his grip on the laptop bag looked a bit tight.

And then Lex walked into the conference room with him, side-by-side, to talk the assistant plant managers and shift supervisors into helping him -- helping _them_ \-- buy out the factory from under his father.

~*~*~*~*~*~


End file.
